Crater Lake

Chapter Three

"Turn, turn to the rain and the wind."

The mournful dirge was the first thing that Ryan Cawdor heard as he fought his way up out of the slimy-walled pit of unconsciousness.

He raised a cautious hand, touching the side of his head, finding a great bruise that felt soggy to his probing fingers. He gasped, opened his eye and looked around.

He was back in the room with the chattering electronic consoles. Ryan noticed that the heavy door was shut again.

"Better, lover?" Krysty asked. She was kneeling at his side.

"Yeah. Who hit me?"

"There was a mutie outside. You saw him?"

"Little bastard. In furs? Got a gun with a bell muzzle on it, bigger'n Finn's belly?"

"Yeah. Blunderbuss. Old homemade piece. If'n he'd squeezed off on it, he'd have blown you from here to tomorrow. But he didn't."

"I heard..."

"Me," Lori said proudly, but with a faint note of doubt.

"You shot him?"

Krysty grinned. "She's a tad worried because she realized afterward that her bullet must have missed you by about this much." She held her finger and thumb an inch apart.

"That's far enough, Lori. Thanks."

"It was more than that," she protested. "More like this." Her finger and thumb were at least two inches apart.

"But who in the long chill laid me out?"

"Sorry, Ryan. Had no choice."

"Jak?"

"Yeah."

"How?" Ryan found it hard to believe that the skinny little kid had sent him flying so easily.

"Kicked you."

Ryan closed his eye, shaking his head in disbelief. Krysty was grinning at him when he blinked up again. "It's true, lover. Damnedest thing ever. Hair flying like snow in a northern blizzard. Pushed off the side of the door with his hands, kicked you round 'bout shoulder high. Both feet. Bounced you out of the mutie's firing line. Your head was the first thing to hit the floor."

"Lucky it wasn't nothing fucking important," Finnegan cackled. "That was something, Ryan. Fiery little demon, ain't he?"

Ryan stood up, shaking his head to try to clear the muzziness. "Thanks, Jak. And you, Lori. There any more of those muties out yonder?"

"After Lori sent that one to go buy the farm, we checked a ways up the corridor," J.B. answered. "To the left's a dead end. Blank wall. No more doors. Other way's open, but the ceiling's real bad. Lot of places where it's collapsed."

"There's a big fall less than a hundred yards along that way," Krysty added. "Narrow gap's all. We figured best to come back in here with you sleeping so tight."

"Best we go look," Ryan said.

"Follow up that radio message," J.B. said, his voice holding just a hint of a question.

"Yeah. Why not?"

This time Ryan was a whole lot more careful. He kept flat as the lever was thrown, then moved out quickly, backed by Finn. The others came out only after the signal was given that the corridor was clear.

"See that?" Krysty said, pointing at the outside of the glittering metal door. It was deeply scratched and gouged, with scorch marks in places. "Someone tried real hard to get in there."

"Muties like him?" Ryan suggested, pointing with the barrel of the G-12 at the corpse of the little man. Lori had shot him with either a lot of luck or impressive skill. Bearing in mind how close the bullet had come to taking him through the back of the neck, Ryan chose not to think too long on which it had been.

The dead man was only about five feet in height and looked about thirty years old. His face was flat, with a coppery cast to the skin. The lips were narrow, peeled back to reveal long, curved teeth. The nails on the small hands were long and twisted, like horn. The man wore a coat of animal skins and furs, probably rodent. The gun had a hand-carved stock, while the barrel was iron, with the extra-large mouth riveted on. It was based on a primitive flintlock design.

"Rough old blaster," Finn said.

"Rip the belly out of even you," Ryan replied, kicking it aside with his foot.

The blood was drying, black around the neat hole just above the man's right eye. It had leaked over his face, filling the gaping mouth with a pool of crimson. A lot more blood had oozed from the exit wound at the back of the skull.

There was an odd weapon hooked to the belt of the dead mutie. It consisted of several narrow lengths of hollow wood, each about twelve inches long, ending in a sharp, barbed tip of something like ivory. A rawhide cord ran through the middle of the sections. J.B. bent over it.

"Interesting."

"What is it, Mr. Dix? I confess myself somewhat puzzled by it."

"Spear."

Doc Tanner smiled doubtfully. "You are teasing me, are you not?"

"No."

"A spear only a foot in length? Perhaps for hunting the inhabitants of the land of Lilliput."

"Where the fuck's that, Doc?" Finn asked. But his question was ignored.

The Armorer unhooked the strange weapon from the belt of the corpse. He held the cord and flicked it hard with his wrist. Miraculously the sections slotted into one another, producing a lethal, six-foot-long spear.

"Gimme," Jak said, holding out a hand. He took the spear, let it fall into its component sections, then whipped it out to full length. Grinning delightedly, he said, "Be good. I can keep it, Ryan?"

"Sure. Why not? Come on, let's go."

The avalanche could have happened anytime. Maybe only a month ago, maybe when the bombs had rained down on the free land of America. Concrete, stones and earth had slipped, blocking the corridor and leaving only a small gap barely three feet high at its apex.

"Anything?" Ryan asked Krysty.

"No. Not close. But I can hear something, quite a long way off. Maybe an engine. Maybe feet moving. Can't tell. Blurred by the deeps here."

"I'll go look," Jak volunteered. "I'm smallest here for it."

The albino scampered lightly up the earthslide on hands and knees, pausing a moment and staring into the hole.

"Does it go through?" Ryan shouted.

"Yeah. It's around ten feet. Easy. You coming?"

Finnegan had the most difficulty, wriggling along on his stomach, pushing his gun ahead of him, panting, red-faced, sweating despite the chill, but eventually he made it.

When Ryan himself was halfway through, bringing up the rear of the group, he was suddenly oppressed by the thought of how many trillions of tons of dirt hung above him. It had fallen before. One day it might fall again.

The corridor resumed on the far side of the dirt tunnel. It stretched out, ill-lit, curving gently to the right. The air tasted noticeably fresher, and it was much colder.

"Fucking freezing, Ryan. Got to get some warmer gear. Left most of mine along the way."

Finn was right. If it was as bitter as this deep down in the redoubt, it didn't much bear thinking on what it would be like if they got out into the open.

"If they evacuated in a rush, there could be some clothes around."

"If they haven't got to 'em first," J.B. said, pointing with his mini-Uzi at the many footprints that patterned the dusty floor.

"Must be hundreds of 'em," Finnegan said, bending to study the marks. "Most got skin boots on, like the chilled mutie back there."

"But they didn't get in the gateway," Ryan said. "Controls aren't hard. Just the number code on the panel. Figures they can't read. That being so, there may be other parts of the redoubt they haven't penetrated. We stay here, we freeze. We go back to the gateway and move on, then we never follow up that radio beam."

"Then it's onward and upward, my dear Ryan," Doc Tanner said, grinning and showing his oddly perfect teeth. "Let us carry our banner with its strange device and cry 'Excalibur!' to all we meet."

There were times when Ryan thought the old man would never get his full set of brains back.

Everyone was on battle alert.

J.B. took point, with Finn three paces behind him on the other side of the corridor. Doc and Lori walked together, followed by Jak. Krysty came sixth, and Ryan covered the rear, twenty paces behind her.

J.B. signaled for everyone to halt, then dropped to one knee, squinting along the barrel of the mini-Uzi. "Thought I saw somebody," he whispered. "Gone."

And once Ryan himself paused at a place where the corridor bent more sharply. He went around the curve, hesitated then suddenly retreated. Just at the edge of his vision, about a hundred paces away, two or three of the diminutive muties had seen him and had scampered out of sight.

They passed several rooms, most with open doors. Without exception, the rooms had been stripped completely bare. Some had carried signs over them, stenciled on wood, then affixed to the concrete. Though these were all gone, a few ghostly impressions of the lettering remained, in the same way that a picture on a wall will leave a pattern when taken down.

Orthodontal Surgery, one said.

Comsec R & R, another, more mysterious one said.

TR Manual 31C, a third said.

One door was much larger than the others, wide enough to get a war wag through it. It was simply headed Stores Subsec 9M.

"Stores sounds promising," J.B. said, beckoning to the others. "Worth a try?"

"How do we get in? Over, under or around?"

"Or through, Ryan?" the Armorer asked. "Looks like the muties have tried." There were ample dents and scratches in the dull matt-green metal, but no sign that the door had been opened in the past hundred years. "Control panel's not harmed."

Oddly, that was true. There was a palm-print indent in the control panel to the right of the door. A small digital display glowed faintly in the half-light.

"Any guesses?" Ryan asked.

"Probably not a sec lock system," Doc Tanner said. "No need deep inside the redoubt. Clean the dust off the panel and look at which ones are worn. Bound to show."

Ryan used his sleeve to wipe the display clear of gray dust. His breath fogged the transparent plastic, and he smeared that away. By squinting at an angle he could see that the old man was right. The letter Kwas marked, and so was the number 7. He pressed them, but nothing happened.

"Try the other way round. Seven and then the letter," Krysty suggested.

"Yeah," Ryan said. "Just going to."

There was the whirring of a motor, straining and grinding, then the door rolled about five feet upward and grated to a halt.

"Something burn," Lori said. A few wisps of smoke drifted out of the panel. For a moment, a tiny flame glowed red-gold, like the gleam in the eye of a hunting beast.

Finally the dreadful sound of mangling metal ceased, and the fire disappeared. Ryan looked at the heavy door, considering his next course of action. If there were sealed stores behind it, then it might be worth the gamble of ducking under. He touched the frozen metal; it was vibrating slightly, as if a motor were still turning over somewhere within it.

"It's going to fall," Jak said, spitting on the corridor floor. "If'n we go, best go now."

"Go," Ryan ordered.

A glimpse of the muties gathering behind them had helped him decide. There might be dozens more around the next curve of the main passage, and they'd be caught like nuts in the jaws of the crusher. They ducked under the trembling sec door, Doc Tanner having to stoop considerably to avoid knocking off his stovepipe hat.

They found themselves in a narrow corridor with a high ceiling. The lighting was good, and there was little dust. Ryan wasn't sure whether he imagined it, but it didn't seem quite so bone-chillingly cold.

Finn didn't agree. "Fuck a mutie rattler, Ryan! I'm colder than a fucking well-digger's ass."

"Then lets go see what we can find. J.B.?"

"Yeah?"

"Any way of fixing that door so it comes down? I'd feel safer with that locked at m'back."

J.B. stepped toward the ponderous steel shutter. Then he stopped, hearing what they all heard — a loud scraping noise, then the sonorous pinging of large cables snapping. Like the others, he moved away from the door. It fell a couple of inches, jerkily, then suddenly dropped to the floor with a massive crunch, making the stone walls and floor resound. Dust pattered from the ceiling, showering them all.

"Take the Lord Almighty to open up that sucker now," Finnegan said. "You wanted safe, Ryan. You got fucking safe."

It was disappointing.

Not so bad as some of the redoubts that Ryan and J.B. had found when they'd ridden with the Trader. Some of those had been stripped cleaner than charity, with nothing left inside but bare walls. At least the evacuation of this Oregon redoubt had left a little behind.

But it was disappointingly little.

There were no weapons at all, with those sections completely cleared. No blasters, no grens, no missiles. Ryan's group had better luck in the area of the redoubt where food and drink had been stored.

There were sealed containers of Colorado Springfresh Water. Finn peeled the ring off the top of one of the clear-plas containers, and sipped cautiously.

"Not bad, folks. Come on, you guys, belly up to the bar and try some."

Ryan was suddenly conscious of the dryness in his throat and the dust that seemed to layer his lungs. He lifted one of the bottles from the opened case, tasting its contents, amazed that it was still good and fresh after so many years.

"Food here," Jak called out.

When the occupants of the redoubt had evacuated, they'd left all open cases and packages behind. There were some self-heats. Beans with bacon, beans with pork. Rice and stew, which looked good from the picture of a steaming banquet on the outside of the double-layer tin. Lori heated a can, waiting the approved three minutes, opened it and put it down on the floor.

"Ugh. Looks like shit," she said, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

"Probably tastes like it, too," Ryan said, grinning.

"What the fuck's this?"

"Tinned asparagus, Finn. Got lotsa iron."

"Sure, J.B., sure. Still looks like a can o' pickled muties' cocks."

The side room where the cases of food were stored began to smell good, with the steam from the self-heats misting the cold air. Everyone ate their fill, regardless of the odd gastronomical mix.

Ryan stuck to beans with diced pork, devouring three large cans before he felt satisfied. Krysty ate two self-heats of turkey, mixing it with cabbage. Finn managed nearly five of the chili beef, mixing in chicken-fried steak with rice. Jak would touch only the cans of fruit, sucking out the sweet syrup, licking his pale lips eagerly. Lori nibbled daintily at some mashed lobster with clam chowder, blowing on the bubbling mix to cool it enough to eat.

"Damned load of convenience clappertrap!" Doc Tanner moaned. "Time was we'd have found real food, not this syntho garbage. Art of cooking died in the United States around 1950. After that it was all damned packs and damned cans and add water and mix well and pop in the damned oven for three damned minutes at regulo three and... Oh, the hell with it all! I just hope that damned Sara Lee and her sisterhood are spinning perpetually in their urns!"

Doc ate only a tin and a half of long, obscenely pink frankfurter sausages, their skins glistening moistly in the half-light of the food storage chambers. But even he couldn't resist a large flat tin. When peeled open, after the obligatory wait, it revealed row upon row of small, circular blueberry muffins, deliciously light and mouthwatering. Everyone tried them.

Jak burped, grinning widely and holding his stomach. "Food good," he said. "Now feel like sleeping. What do we do, Ryan?'

"Sleep's a fine idea, Jak," Ryan agreed, glancing down at his chron. "I make it around late afternoon. Mebbe dusk out. Best we wait here. Move on in the morning. You agree?" Nobody spoke. "Well, you don't disagree. Best scout out the rest of this section, J.B., then set a patrol. If it's secure, we can risk a single guard."

"There's a pile of packing stuff. Plas sheets. Make good bedding," Finn said, pointing across the large room.

Ryan realized how tired he felt. The bang on the side of his head still throbbed, and the idea of lying down and closing his eye was exquisite. But sleep would have to wait.

Although their location in the stores seemed secure, and the door that had slammed down behind them was immovable, Ryan and J.B. scouted while the others got the bedding ready. There were several smaller storage chambers on either side of the central block, but there wasn't time to examine them closely. At a quick glance, it looked as if most of them were stripped bare, doors swung open. But a couple near the end were still closed. J.B. pressed his eyes to the ob-slit and whistled.

"This one was overlooked during evac, Ryan. Dozens of packing cases, all sealed tight."

"Check 'em tomorrow," Ryan said. "How 'bout that big end door?"

They approached it, noting its similarity to the entrance behind them. It was closed, with a control box dangling from an overhead cable gantry. Unlike the other door, this one looked as if it had only two modes. Red and green. Up and down.

"Try it?" J.B. asked.

Ryan took the control in his right hand, feeling the biting cold of the metal. He glanced at the Armorer, who stood braced, the mini-Uzi at his hip. "Ready?"

"Sure."

The green button was convex, fitting the ball of his thumb. He pressed it, immediately shifting his thumb to the red button, in case of danger. There was the faint hiss of hydraulics, and the door began to inch upward, a strip of light appearing under it.

"Hold it," J.B. said, ducking low to peek beneath it. "Nothin' there. I can see both sides. Concrete corridor that bends left. Must join up where the other one was curving right."

"Now? Go look or close it up?"

"Safe enough to close it. If it's shut after a hundred years, it'll stay another night for us."

Ryan pressed the red button, and like a massive guillotine blade of armored steel, the door paused a moment then began to descend again, landing with a barely perceptible thud.

"If this one failed, we'd have us some serious problems," J.B. said. "Take some high-ex to shift it. Probably bring the whole roof down if'n we tried."

It was a bleak thought to take to sleep.